As Jack and his family prepare for him to age out, he will be attending the Misericordia day program until they finish building a new home where he plans to move into full time. In preparation for this, Jack’s IEP team has focused their efforts on duplicating a schedule around community trips that are more practical to what his day will look like at Misericordia. In order to do this, we have set up a schedule that consists of grocery shopping once a week, volunteer experience at Bernie’s Book Bank where he goes for two hours once a week and stickers books that are distributed to at-risk children in the community, a full day at the college, a weekly on-site day at Misericordia, and then a full community day on Fridays where we do various activities.

As part of his transition, the transition program, his family and Misericordia have been working together very closely to try and ensure it is as easy on Jack as possible. At Misericordia, Jack will primarily be working with two aides who have been working really hard to learn as much about him as they can. For the last month, they have been coming to various community outings to see how his day is structured and what he is successful with and the areas where he could use more support. Additionally, he has been going to Misericordia once a week and his aide has been going with him to support him and the staff when necessary. Each time his aide goes he fades the level of support he is providing a little bit with the ultimate goal of him going on his own and completing his work completely independently.